


May You Arrive at Fertile Phthia

by dornishsphinx



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuuin no Tsurugi | Fire Emblem: Binding Blade, Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken | Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Classics, F/M, Family Drama, Internalised Classism, Mommy Issues, Parent-Child Relationship, Past Child Abuse, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Self-Esteem Issues, parental abandonment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-26 19:52:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18289106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dornishsphinx/pseuds/dornishsphinx
Summary: "Erk and Nino were married after the conflict and were gifted with twin boys. Their time in Pherae was happy until bounty hunters came for Nino. To protect her family, she disappeared. Erk vanished looking for her."A stranger comes to the Ilian highlands.





	May You Arrive at Fertile Phthia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [airlock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/airlock/gifts).



> Hello!! First things first, YOU GAVE ME THE EXCUSE TO FINALLY WRITE ERK/NINO, THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! I had a blast writing for them!
> 
> But most importantly, I hope you enjoy! :)
> 
> (Also, though I've listed canon-typical violence, don't worry, I made sure to follow your request ^_^)

**I. THE LOVERS ON SKYROS**

 

> _nay, come, take me as thy comrade; why should i not carry the standard of mars with thee? thou dist carry with me the wands and holy things of bacchus, though ill-fated troy believe it not_

Nino had told him that she picked up magic by watching her false mother, without a single word of instruction, and had said it blithely, as though that wasn’t something astounding. He’d not quite believed it, even when he came to know her and her honest nature, but as she replicated his movement and prayer with the staff in near perfect replication, and he felt the softness of healing magic envelop him, he found his remaining doubts slipping away.

The flow of heavenly magic didn’t quite get rid of the bruise, but the purple mark transformed into the unsightly yellow that would normally signal a few days’ healing.

“Sorry,” she said, her face a picture of worry. “I know I’m wasting the staff’s power.” She turned it in her hands, over and over. “I’m just not really sure how it works. It feels different to anima.” 

Erk knew how magic worked. He had studied each intricacy and eccentricity he'd need to overcome in order to one day succeed Lord Pent as Mage General. Nino didn’t, but her overwhelming natural talent let her ignore them, like how a pegasus could ignore the mountain range a horse needed weeks to conquer.

It should have been irritating, how little she seemed to acknowledge her own natural talents when Erk had worked ceaselessly over the years and still did not have her level of ease when it came to calling the spirits, he with a stiffness of book learning and rote recitation where Nino was all fluidity and grace. He should probably have felt threatened, worried Lord Pent would pass him over for a pupil of innate superior ability, and if it had been someone less open, and kind, and in a constant state of self-doubt, he likely would have.

Instead, though, after Nergal was dead, when he’d seen her kneeling by the spot where she’d felled the false Brendan Reed with a lost expression on her face, he’d decided on the spot that she would be coming back to Reglay with him for a time. A proper master could make up for those long, wasted years of magical non-education.

That master was Lord Pent and not himself, of course. He’d been prepared to make a solid case and lay it out before him, but Lord Pent was nothing if not open-hearted; it had barely taken a few minutes to convince him to accept Nino as an unofficial apprentice for a few months. Still, it lit something like happiness inside him each time Nino would ask for his aid in deciphering some text, or explaining some esoteric concept, though her nervousness when she did—like she thought he might strike her for doing so—would often snuff it out as quickly. He was not her bitch of a mother, and the insinuation he ever could be was infuriating. Still, the first time his temper had flared because of it, the fear in her eyes had been like cold water drenching him. His anger had drowned in regret and unease, and it had been more than a week before she’d had the courage to even look him in the eye again, let alone ask any questions.

He’d henceforth done his level best to temper his tongue around her.

“It’s all right,” he said. The words were awkward. Erk had never been the sort to sit and consider what to say with care, cushioning the sharp edges of a word like slipping a hawking glove onto Nino’s soft hand so his talons wouldn’t rip into her. It was so hard, sometimes, to remember she’d been part of a family whose names had struck fear into the hearts of the nobility of every nation on the continent. Nino wasn’t exactly sensitive, but his words didn’t bounce off her like they did off Serra—by Elimine’s mercy, she was not like Serra—or Lord Pent and Lady Louise. Instead of a skin of porcelain or iron, hers was more like poorly-constructed chainmail: she was impervious to the hardest blow one moment, but then a small comment or well-meaning critique would make her go far too quiet.

There was no false modesty in Nino’s worry and condemnation of herself; maybe that was why he’d never been able to resent her.

Nino looked him in the eyes nervously. “Shall I do it again?”

Erk nodded, and she repeated the movement. The soft light illuminated his skin, and then the bruise was gone completely. He poked at where it had been. No ache remained.

“Thank you,” he said, hoping it would bring Nino’s cheeriness back. 

It did, and when she grinned brightly at him, Erk felt his ears go warm. “I’m glad it’s better now,” she said, so openly and honestly that Erk thought he felt his ribs twist. “I’m sure Lord Klein didn’t mean to bite.”

“Hm. I wouldn’t be so sure,” he said with a huff.

He wasn’t sure how to deal with children, and it seemed children knew how to deal with him even less. Maybe he ought to take the same approach as he had done with Nino and soften his words around them, but he only softened his words for her because a lifetime had taught her that harsh words were things to be feared. Once she realised they weren’t, at least when they came from him, she would understand that his nature wasn’t a knife he wanted to stick in her—no wait, he hastily rephrased that in his own head—rather, she’d understand that his nature, which he’d readily admit was on the colder side compared to hers, wasn’t disapproval or scorn.

He hoped.

“Really, though! Aren’t you his big brother?”

He was about to tell her that it didn’t count, since he was Reglay’s son by neither descent nor adoption, but then he hesitated as he remembered the assassins Nino still talked of fondly to this day, if with a look of melancholy in her eye.

“I suppose,” he said, noncommittally. 

“There you are! He’s just a baby, after all. I’m sure he’d never dream of hurting you if he knew that’s what he was doing.”

As she smiled at him, he found himself staring for a moment too long. His neck felt too warm. He smiled back, hesitantly.

“Still,” said Nino. She hesitated, and bit her lip before continuing on bravely, “It’s a little strange to call a baby _lord_ , isn’t it?”

For perhaps the fifth time that day, she looked at him as if expecting to be chastised.  

“It is a bit,” said Erk.

Nino blinked in surprise, and blushed red. “R-right! I thought so, but I wasn’t sure. I mean Lloyd and Linus did always say those airs and graces are just a show and nobles are humans underneath. Of course, I don’t think they were quite talking about it in the sense that they’re good or anything, and more like they get corrupted and killed easier than you think… n-not that I’m planning on killing anybody! But…”

As she continued babbling on, and he watched her grow more and more flustered, a strange, pleasant ache began to throb between his ribs.

“I mean, if you call someone _lord_ from the moment they’re born, aren’t they just going to end up believing they’re different from everyone else? Like everyone they rule aren’t as good as them?”

“They are different than everyone else,” said Erk.

Erk was not a noble. Before Lord Pent had taken him in, he’d never even seen one from a distance, let alone up close. Still, though he’d dare not dream of being on the same level as Lord Pent and Lady Louise, that was not to say he did not want it. He imagined it, sometimes, when he thought the effort of honing his magic might kill him: becoming Mage General of all Etruria, no longer reliant on Lord Pent’s name to be treated with basic respect by the nobility, gaining a position of such prestige that he could pay Lord Pent back for all his kindnesses he’d done him.

Someday, perhaps.  

Though it was nothing more than the truth, Nino looked rather sad at the idea.

“Still…” she said, trailing off, and looking at him as though she was watching a tragedy unfold.

“Lord Pent and Lady Louise are very kind,” he assured her. “Even if you were to forget Lord Klein’s title, they would not take offence.”

“They are, but… they’re the ones who took you in. Why can’t you call them by their names? Or Father and Mother?” 

The pleasant ache had become uncomfortable. “I am an apprentice, not a son.”

Nino looked heartbroken, which was hardly necessary. He’d willingly taken Lord Pent up on his offer, an opportunity that only came around once every hundred lifetimes. Lord Pent and Lady Louise even showered him with such undeserved affection it often scared him, which was more than most masters deigned to give their students; even if they had not, he would be forever grateful that he had been noticed and given the chance to rise.  

“But you left everything behind. Your family, and your home.”

“I chose to do that,” he said. “There’s nothing tragic in it.”

Nino’s expression disagreed, and with more haste than it really deserved, he quickly shoved the conversation forward, hoping she’d smile again and he could forget the sense of unease her questions raised in him.

 

**II. ACHILLES AMONG THE ASPHODEL**

 

> _what daring brought you down to the house of death, where the senseless, burnt-out wraiths of mortals make their home?_

Settlements around these parts catered mainly to woodsmen, and now that the thick, vast forests of the region had encased themselves in ice that would turn away even the sturdiest of axes, most were ghost towns. Still, there were always some who lingered into the season for one reason or another; when she heard the sound of boots a few paces away, she pulled her scarf tighter to make sure her lower face was fully covered. This was Ilia, after all, where you were never too far from someone with a good memory for wanted faces.

She cast a glance over at the owner of the boots. He was a young blonde, pretty in the same way Lucius was, with a little bluebird resting on his shoulder. His eyes, almost the same hue as his little companion’s plumage, were fixed on her. It was too unpractised a stare for even the greenest of mercenaries or thieves, and his stance was too relaxed for someone desperate, so she was more curious than nervous when she turned to fully face him.

“Can I help you?”

“You’re a difficult woman to find.”

Such words had so often resulted in a knife being shoved at her throat that her fingers instinctively twitched towards her tome, but he spoke again before she could decide whether to seize it or not.

“The innkeeper told me you know the highlands better than anyone. I do have the right person, yes?”

She had once hidden in the mountains even on days where she thought her skin might turn to frost; the serene, white peaks had furnished her with enough bad memories to rival all the curses, knives and refrains of _it’s nothing personal, kid_ of the world below.

“Maybe not better than anyone,” she said, drawing her hand away from the bag and wondering if, at this point, it was really the truth, “But I do know them well enough.”

“Ah, that’s good,” he said with a smile. “I was hoping to visit someone, but she’s also not the kind of woman one finds easily. Even so, I’d see the view from the top of the mountain of the ice dragon before I return home, if you’d be willing to guide me there.”

His accent, now that she listened more closely, smacked of Etruria. It was that pure, concentrated sound of upper-crust Aquileia that Erk had always unconsciously tried, and failed, to imitate; northern Etruria and a burgher past gave his voice its own unique sound. His accent had always been pleasant to her ears, even when the tone it conveyed was grumpy or annoyed. Though this one was different, any Etrurian accent was an uncommon thing to hear around these parts, and the familiar unfamiliarity of it stuck its way between her ribs.

She smiled apologetically even so. She’d avoided being at high altitude in wintertime since the year she and Niime had been forced to dig their way through a grave’s worth of snow to find Uncle Canas and Aunt Irina, and a pretty Etrurian who sounded somewhat like a husband she’d not seen in years would not change that.

“I don’t like going higher than the foothills once winter sets in. Maybe you could come back in spring?”

“Spring?” he said softly.

His face was downcast, and the sight of it awoke some anxious old instinct that told her to smooth it away. As she considered what to do, the bluebird on his shoulder stretched its wings and chirped. Her eyes flitted over to it. The stranger had such serenity that the little creature had not fluttered away all this time.

“Does your bird have a name?” she asked.

He paused, but held a finger up to the little creature. It pecked at it affectionately, and a small smile came to his lips.

“Penelope.”

She regarded him for a moment longer, and then turned her head to the mountains. The dragon’s mountain reached higher than all the rest, a spear of white against a blue, cloudless sky.

“The weather is good today,” she said. “I guess I can make an exception.”

When they took to the sky, climbing higher and higher, the wind began to pick up. Kai whickered in distress as a strong blast moved him off course. She removed one hand from his reins, patted his neck soothingly, and let the wind steal a whisper from her mouth; when the spirits of the air heard it, they grew softer, sleepier, like a child hearing a lullaby. By the time they landed on the summit, the air was still as a crypt.

She dismounted, feet sinking into a thick layer of virgin snow. She righted herself and, like a knight for his beloved, stretched out a hand to her passenger. He didn’t seem to notice, lost in the view around him. The look in his eyes reminded her of a younger woman who had run to the mountains, all the sorrow and regret in her heart eclipsed, if for a moment, by what felt like the whole continent unfurling before her, and so he took back her hand and left him to his silence and awe.

“Is that Edessa in the distance?” he said, eventually.

“Yes, it is. And that blue line is the sea.”

She considered pointing out other landmarks she’d slowly deciphered over the years, but he continued on before she could get a word out.

“It looks so small from here, so insignificant. Like there’s nobody there at all.”

He was right. She’d spent the whole war in the mountains, only learning that the Bernese had invaded and been expelled, that Ilia been conquered and regained its independence as one unified whole—that there was a King in Edessa, of all the unexpected things—when she’d flown down a few months ago. Even so, she had thought about little else except the world and the people in it since retreating into her cold exile.

“It’s true there are people who go into the mountains to focus on the greater mysteries,” she said, recalling the second lot of family she’d left behind in the Carrhae mountains to the west when her existence had proven a danger to them as well. “They become masters of their craft by forgetting the world exists at all.”

Kai stamped his hoof impatiently, clearly ready to be in the stables and out of the cold. She gave him a few pats on the nose.

“There now, Kai,” she said. “Don’t fuss.”

She heard a soft curse, so faint she thought she might have imagined it; when she glanced back over at the stranger, frustration had crossed over his pretty features. He blinked, and blinked again, before his face sank back into a weary solemnity.

“I suppose I’ve seen it, then,” he said, a faint bitterness beneath the tranquillity with which he covered it. He felt for his coin purse and brought forth the agreed sum with a fair number of extra silvers, rubbing each coin between his forefinger and thumb as he handed them over. “Time to head back.”

She considered the coins, and the man, and the deathly-silent town beneath them.

“Where do you want to go?”

 

**III. ODYSSEUS AND THE KEEPER OF THE WINDS**

 

> _ay, verily, either the pelean shall accompany me hither, or the truth lies deep indeed and calchas hath not spoken by apollo_

The port at Remi was quite unlike the mountains. Any snow that fell here was immediately trampled under a hundred-thousand feet into nothingness, and the crushing numbers were a shock after such a long time spent alone with only Kai and the strange company of highland spirits. The latter had frightened her at first; brittle, sharp things, some smelling of a spike of ice from Fimbulvetr, and others of the thunderclap of Bolting when the skies grew dark overhead, but now she was used to them, she missed their sharpness compared to the soft, half-crushed things here.

She’d escaped into an alley, half-hidden from the rest of Remi, as she waited for the stranger—Elphin, he’d told her to call him—and the cup of glogg he’d insisted on fetching for her when she’d told him further payment was unnecessary. The buildings on either side of the alley were papered with notices. They’d no doubt been relocated from the main thoroughfares to make space for the large declarations of King Zelot’s ascension to the throne and other decorations done in the blue and white of Ilia that must have been up there for months judging by how wet and bedraggled they now were.

Father had always praised their homeland for not having a king. There was an inevitability to kings and kingship, he had said, that warped them into tyrants. Lloyd and Linus had always nodded along with him. She wondered what they might have had to say about the Mercenary King, had any of them been alive today.

Anyway. She tore her thoughts away from Father and Lloyd and Linus, instead making a game of finding something other than a bounty; it was good practise to read often, Canas had told her, and unlike Castle Reglay or the little Pheraen house Lord Eliwood had gifted her, there was little opportunity to do so in the mountains. One bounty, two bounties, four, eight—

Her hand froze against Kai’s nose as her eyes almost moved past one of the smaller bounties. A chill, quite separate from her wintry surroundings, stuck into her heart like an assassin’s blade. Kai whickered and butted his head against her palm, but she pulled it away and dragged it against the wall on instinct, turning the bounty to wet ash with a mutter before taking Kai’s reins in hand, and readying him to fly—

She faltered.

Years ago, when she’d received a letter from Jaffar informing her of Erk’s disappearance, she’d plundered Niime’s supplies for paper and scribbled down a request that his whereabouts, and the whereabouts of their children, be uncovered. The words had been messy and nigh illegible, panic turning all Canas’ lessons to uselessness; each fault had reminded her of Erk’s steady hand on hers as he helped guide the pen on official documents and brought fire to her eyes. She’d burnt the letter as soon as it was completed and written a second, calmer draft, requesting that Jaffar check in on them and never, under any circumstance, reveal their location in case she proved weak enough to relent, return, and put them all in danger once more.

She cursed her own stupidity, the vennel around her seeming smaller, tighter on both sides, the voice in her head deep and cruel and feminine. Stupid, _stupid girl_ —

Someone coughed behind her, and she turned to see that Elphin had returned, Penelope still happily perched on his shoulder. His face was unreadable as he looked down at her left hand, where smudges of black stuck stubbornly to her skin. She tried not to be too obvious as she shoved the offending hand into her pocket.

“O-oh, you’re back already,” she said, voice weak as he handed over the glogg. “Thank you so very much.”

The cup was warm under her other fingers, the steam that billowed from it carrying the scent of cinnamon, cloves and the sweet, dark undertone of wine. She clasped it tight as an anchor in a storm.

“There are such notices on those two particular heads littering the continent,” he said, just as soon as she’d begun to hope he’d not realised what she’d done. “You’re the first I’ve seen to destroy one. That incurs a fine under Ilian law, I’m led to believe.”

“The entire continent?!”

Her forced calm was teetering farther and farther down into a pit of panic and wild fear.

“I’d recommend you not go after them. There’s a reason the bounty is set so high. They have friends in places yet higher, and skill of their own to spare.”

It took a moment for understanding to set in, and she could have laughed when it hit her; after all, it wasn’t as though she was a stranger to the life of an assassin, even if the Black Fang had killed for justice and not for coin, and even if that had been long, long ago.

“It’s nice to see people still looking out for each other,” she said, and meant it, truly. “But…”

“I can’t stop you. But you should know they fought against the King of Bern. Surely they deserve a little mercy.”

The image of a young man, his entreaties to the gods soft and sad and never to be fulfilled, came to her. No matter who he was now, he would always be that melancholic young prince whose optimism for tomorrow had not yet evaporated in her mind, the one whose words had so resonated with her soul that they had set her on the path to the light.

She’d not realised they’d been there to take him down in the end.

“You know a lot about them,” she said, pushing away the thought of Raigh and Lugh advancing on Prince Zephiel and ending his life where she had faltered. “Who are you?”

“I fought at their side against Bern. We were never particularly close, but I won’t just stand by without a word and let them be slain.”

“You fought with them?! Please, you have to tell me where they are!”

The words tumbled out without even thinking about it. She’d grabbed onto the front of his cloak, she realised when she was already tugging him forward to face her fully; the blue material was fine against her hands. Their eyes met and, as a strong, wintry breeze rolled through the street, stroking along Kai’s feathers and catching on her hair and scarf, his own widened.  

“Please tell me,” she said, her voice quieter as she tried to soften the desperate wail her first plea had turned into. “This is my fault, not theirs. I need to protect them. I need to.”

Elphin stared at her for a moment longer.

“Reglay,” he said.

She let go of him, leaving a fist-shaped scruff in his once-smooth cloak. She apologised profusely as she scrambled up onto Kai, only noticing Elphin’s hand on the bridle when she’d already given him the command to go.

“You’re not going alone.”

 

  **IV. ATHENA AT THE GATES OF ITHACA**

 

> _down she darted from the topmost summits of olympus, and took her stand on the threshold of the court; she was in the likeness of a stranger_

Elphin had been silent for most of the journey to Etruria, which was good as Kai was still uneasy about having a man on his back, even if he’d warily accepted it after some coaxing. As they reached his native land, however, his desire to talk seemed to come back to him.

“We’re getting close,” he said.

“You’re sure they’re in Reglay? You’re absolutely sure?”

“Hopefully. Marquess Pherae and Countess Caerleon were quick off the mark to offer them and their charges aid once it was revealed who they are, but Count Reglay was even faster, and he has the most famed library of magic in all Etruria on his side. That ought to be enough of an incentive to override even Raigh’s stubbornness.”

She tried not to dwell on the fact he knew her sons better than she did.

“Charges?”

“Their orphanage was destroyed by Bernese forces. They swore revenge for it, which I suppose they’ve now exacted. They planned to return and make sure the younger children were safe.”

“An orphanage?” she said, partly to herself.

As time had passed and no news came to her mountain hideaway of Erk’s return, she had wondered where he and their children had ended up. While she’d tried not to dwell on it, in the dead of night when there was nothing but her thoughts, images would come to her of them growing up alongside little Lord Klein and little Lady Clarine, or perhaps Lord Eliwood doing her yet another kindness on top of the myriad others and taking them into his household, letting them grow up behind thick stone walls that could not hold against a competent assassin. The men they’d named their children for had been one of the other options that floated through her head, calming in its own way. (Lucius had always been kind and gentle, and though Raven had always been a cold, prickly sort, she’d come to give men such as that the benefit of the doubt; it was Raven, in the end, who’d looked most affected by the name she’d given her eldest son, like he’d been punched in the throat. _I presumed the legacy of that name to be lost long ago_ , he’d said eventually, after she asked about it in concern.)

“I hope Reglay stays alert,” she said nervously, remembering as she did Prince Zephiel, alone and innocent in his bedchamber, how heavy the tome had felt in her hands as she’d prepared to end his life, all the silent halls and empty posts. “All the prestige in the world is useless against an assassin who knows what they’re doing.”

Elphin laughed, at what seemed like a private joke. “Believe me,” he said, “I know that all too well. However, the Mage and Knight Generals have both informed me they have put Lord Pent’s armies and their own on alert for bounty hunters and assassins.” 

“Cecilia is in Reglay?”

He smiled. “Cecilia.” His voice was warm when he said her name. “I should have expected you’d know her.”

Cecilia had already grown into a fine young woman the last time she’d seen her; bright, quick-witted and proficient in the magical arts. It came back to her surprisingly easily, those lessons Erk gave in both Reglay and their Pheraen house when she would visit, he with a newfound—if short—patience unearthed by a few years of fatherhood, Cecilia jabbing her finger here and there on the pages of the open books strewn across his library desk, a dozen questions for every facet of each new topic, and her, pretending to read and keep an eye on the twins, but really keeping an ear out and listening to Erk talk at length about the magical theory she’d been denied as a child.

“You knew about this a few days ago and didn’t return?”

“Return here?” He laughed; it might have been amused were the sound not so clipped and cold. “I would be of little assistance against a trained assassin. And anyway, I—”

He cut himself off, and silence reigned once more until they landed on a small hill overlooking Reglay. Her hands shook at the familiar sight. She tried to still them—it might make Kai confused, and worse would be visible to the man behind her—but once again, he was too perceptive.

“I’d say it’s going to be rather too warm for such a scarf here.”

“I get cold easily.”

“I’m sure Ilia makes for a wonderful home, then.” He paused as he stared over at Reglay Castle. “I understand, you know.”

“What do you mean, you understand?” Her voice was hoarser and less confident than the professional tone she’d tried to force it into.

Elphin paused, taking a long, long moment that seemed to last an eternity before he spoke again.

“What it’s like to wander the world, trying to summon a courage to go home that never quite comes. Wondering how they’ll react to you, after all the years that you’ve missed with them. What’s changed without you there.”

She turned to look at him, but he’d slipped off Kai’s back and was walking to the edge of the hill before she could see his face.

“Halt!” cried a voice before she could think of a way to ask Elphin who he really was. “Who goes there?”

Automatically she pulled her hood further over her face as a pair of knights cantered forward to meet them. One was in full armour and the other in light; one had a lance and the other a bow across his back and an arrow-bag patterned in a Sacaen style strapped to the side of his horse. Elphin was unperturbed, but the glint of sunlight on the lance's steel was enough to send a shiver through her. The last time she’d seen one so close had been waking to find one primed, ready to be shoved through her stomach.

Elphin stepped forward, in front of her.

“I am a travelling bard, hoping to perform for Count Reglay, should my music prove pleasing—” 

“Elphin?” said the knight. He took his hand off his horse’s reins and removed his helmet. He was young, with green hair already bouncing back into shape, and had serious eyes. Both knights had the same hair colour, now that she looked at them, and she recalled, for a moment, twin tufts of green hair and mischievous faces beneath them.

She hoped she wasn’t staring at sons she did not recognise at all.

“Sir Lance,” said Elphin. Relief flooded through her body. “How unexpected. I thought you’d renounced your oaths to Etruria for good.”

“I am here as a knight of Pherae. Lord Roy remembers her allies, and so we have been sent here to aid Reglay, but we shall return as soon as the current threat is dealt with.”

“They say Lady Clarine herself personally requested his presence—” interjected his companion, proudly, but Sir Lance’s face was impassive as he interrupted him.

“And what about her over there? She’s not said a word.”

“I hired her as a bodyguard when I was in Ilia,” said Elphin, without missing a beat, as her heart stopped. “I’m not one for fighting, but there are always the odd drunkards who take offence to my songs.” 

“If she could show her face before we let her inside, I’d appreciate it.”

“Is my word not enough?”

Sir Lance’s eyes narrowed.

“Not when we’ve been tasked with making sure those who make a living by the spear can’t get at the two of the most prominent targets on the continent, no.”

“It’s all right, Elphin,” she said and reached for her scarf. Her hand paused for a good second before she was able to tear it away.

The men—including Elphin, though there was less surprise in his eyes—stared at her. It was the other knight who piped up first.

“Surely it can’t be—auntie? But it must be you! Mother is going to be thrilled!” The speed of recognition, and the epithet, took her by surprise. It must have shown on her face, as the grin slid off his face. “I—don’t you remember me? I suppose I must look a lot different now than I did, but you often visited us often.”

She studied his cheery face with its bright eyes, and his mop of green hair, before remembering them in another little boy at his mother’s knee. This was a man near-grown, though. Surely, this couldn’t be the same person. But as she looked into his face, at his eyes and nose and smile, she saw two people she’d known very well in it, and denial slipped away and away until it was out of her grasp.

“…Wolt?”

The grin returned. “You do remember me!”

He slid off his horse’s back to hug her. Behind him, Sir Lance looked disgruntled, but she barely noticed from the shock of realising little Wolt with the constant smiles and childish stories she’d done her best to pretend made sense, was taller than her.

“You’ll be coming back to Pherae, won’t you, once things are settled?” he said, when he pulled back. “Mother always—Mother has always regretted that she wasn’t able to help you when you needed it, and then she lost her chance completely when you disappeared. I just know it would mean so much to her to see you again.”

A brief stab of guilt hit her. Many people had left Rebecca behind, but it had never really occurred to her that she would be overly affected by Nino’s own departure.

“I—perhaps. It would be nice to visit her again.”

He smiled. That familiar smile appearing on a different face—this one with angles and cheekbones instead of the roundness of childhood she remembered—made her dizzy.

Sir Lance cleared his throat. “I expect you’ll be wanting to speak with the Knight General. We’ll take you to him.”

His voice was cold, and his expression set, and Nino wondered how they could possibly have offended him so easily, but before she could sink into her worries as they made their way to the castle, Wolt’s cheery voice, cast low so the two ahead wouldn’t hear, piped up beside her.

“He’s not usually like this,” said Wolt. “He’s just worried the Etrurians won’t let him go back to Lord Roy now that he’s under their jurisdiction, so any time we have to remind the general we exist, it puts him on edge. Really, normally he’s just amazing! He knows so much about tactics and fighting, and I’ve learnt so much from—”

 _The Etrurians._ He said it like she was his countrywoman, a nudge and a light-hearted roll of the eyes. Was she one? She’d been born a Lausian, though unaware of it most of her life, and raised in the glacial embrace of Ilia which, for all its harshness, had still been less stiff and loveless than Sonia’s arms. Erk had carved out a space for her in Etruria, and she’d done the same for him in Pherae when she’d asked if he’d come with her. Were any of them home, or none of them?

Wolt continued chattering at her all the way to the main gates. Nino pulled her hood tighter. From ahead, she could see Sir Lance’s stiff back, and thought she might understand, just a little, what it was to be surrounded by people more comfortable in their own skins than you.

She recognised General Perceval by his armour, and thanked Elimine that Cecilia wasn’t there. Someone had already recognised her; she didn’t need another old face demanding answers. And even if that hadn’t been the case, and she could have glamoured her face to hide it away, the thought of seeing someone who wasn’t Erk in the uniform of the Mage General was too much to bear. 

The Knight General’s head turned to look over at them, and when he did, his eyes widened comically. The poor subordinate talking to him was cut off mid-sentence as he clambered out of his chair and made his way over to them with a quick step, so sudden it made Nino want to scarper away.

“Your—” he stopped. “Elphin. I did not expect to see you here.”

“Your Elphin, indeed,” said the man in question. “I heard from Lady Cecilia that there was some trouble with a bounty on our old comrades.” He frowned then. “Is she not here? She was most concerned about not letting her old mentor’s children be killed.”

“She’s tracking down the one who sent the bounties out, to put a stop to it. The defence of Reglay has been put in my hands for the meantime.”

“I see.”

Perceval crossed his hands behind his back.

“Will you be heading back to Aquileia once you’ve spoken with them?”

Elphin cast a glance over at Nino before his eyes flicked back away. “I have not decided yet.”

Perceval clearly swallowed, but he ducked his head in a brusque nod. “Of course.”

Elphin had seemed lost in his thought, but he came back from them and smiled. Noticeable, even past his dark armour, Perceval’s back straightened.

“You’ll be wanting to see them, and Lord Pent too I presume—” he said, but before he could continue, Nino’s attention was snatched away by a commotion at the castle gates. Perceval’s hand went to his sword, as did Lance’s to his own, and Wolt’s to his bow.

Two boys ran out of the castle gates. One was skinny, somehow pointy in every way, but it was the other one who caused her heart to stop. His face, drawn and scared, was a boyish version of her own, not dissimilar from what she’d sometimes imagined Kai’s might have looked like had her false mother not crushed him like a spider on the wall, and she wondered how she could ever have been concerned that she wouldn’t recognise one of her sons.

“Raigh’s gone!” Lugh said, half a sob, and her chest froze like all the cold Ilian winters that had separated them before now.

****

**V.  PYRRHUS BY THE WALLS OF TROY**

 

> _in crowds the numerous host thronged to embrace me, called the gods to witness; in me once more they saw their loved achilles to life restored_

Raigh had made it just out of sight of Reglay Castle, bag weighed down by a new tome and thoughts firmly ahead and not behind, when the distant voice of his brother started yelling out his name. He cursed and walked faster, but the footsteps behind him grew louder and louder before he was tackled to the ground.

“What are you doing?” he said, batting at the arm—Chad’s, not Lugh’s—when it didn’t let him up. “Let go!”

Chad shook him, annoyance on his face.

“What am I doing? What are _you_ doing?” he said, annoyance written all over his face.

Raigh raised his eyebrows. “I’m going to go make my name as the greatest shaman who ever lived. Don’t get in my way.”

Chad’s face darkened, and he pressed his arm further down. While Raigh struggled in vain, Lugh was valiantly running to catch up with them, huffing and panting. Raigh turned to glare at him, but then he saw the figure following behind him and his hackles raised at that instead. Lugh was always too trusting, but he’d thought that Chad wasn’t a complete idiot!

“Who the hell is that?” he’d just managed to bite out when Lugh ran up beside them.

“Raigh!” Lugh said, his voice half-choked on breathlessness. “Where are you going? It’s not safe out here!”

“And it’s safe in _there_?”

“So many people have come to help us, Raigh!”

Raigh scoffed. “What _help_ were those extra tarts that old geezer insisted we take? If he didn’t look like he’d start bawling and make a racket otherwise, I ought never have accepted them.” He made a noise of disbelief. “Besides, if they stopped coming maybe we could distinguish the assassins from the idiots. Speaking of which—”

“But you had them burnt! The little ones could have—”

“The little ones could have been poisoned on our behalf,” he said. “Not that it’s any of my concern, but if you’re so concerned about them you might want to stop feeding them any scraps you find lying around.”

His smile was heartless, and as Lugh cringed, he took the opportunity to jab his captor in the ribs, spring up and bring out his new grimoire. Chad sputtered and fell away; he opened the book and jabbed his fingers onto its pages in a threatening way, settling his glare on the hooded figure who’d been hesitantly observing them from a distance.

“So,” he said, with a mocking grin and a glare, “Which are you supposed to be, then? An assassin or ‘help’?”

The figure froze, but before she could say a word, Lugh’s hands were on him, struggling to get him to stop pointing the book in her direction.

“She came here with Elphin,” said Lugh. “She’s not dangerous; he vouched for her.”

Raigh scoffed. “Don’t need his help either.”

Lugh’s hands tightened on his arms, and then his face changed.

“Stop it!” he snapped. “Just stop it, Raigh!” The spark of anger took Raigh off guard. His eyes were pulled away from the woman and onto his brother’s uncharacteristic ire. “You said you’d never leave without warning again! Were you lying about that?”

“…Leave without warning? Again?” said the mysterious figure, in a tone that might have been shock, or heartbreak, but Raigh had other things to worry about other than catching up some stranger on his private life.

“This is different!”

“How is it different?”

Raigh gritted his teeth and made to speak, but hesitated. Really, it was different because he was going to go distract the assassins from Lugh, Chad and the little ones by announcing himself in a far less defensible position than Castle Reglay. When he defeated those assassins who came for him, he’d track back the bounty, and kill whoever set it. These two wouldn’t understand, though. They were so concerned with surviving in the present, they couldn’t see the way out of the mess in which they were mired.

“At least let one of us go with you,” said Chad, getting to his feet with a glower. Normally, he was stubborn and harsh, but now, his voice was brittle, and angrier than he’d ever heard it. “You’re going to get yourself _killed_.”

Raigh sneered. “Weren’t you the one all up in arms about the little ones? Concern yourself more with them than me.”

Chad’s eyes flashed, but then they widened. He leapt forward, bringing Raigh crashing down yet again, and he was about to fight back for real this time—he knew how to handle himself, even if Chad was faster and his own talents lay more in magic than common brutality—but he froze as he heard the whistle of the arrow sailing through the point where his back would have been. They were close enough that Raigh could see the fear on Chad’s face— _afraid_ , of some lowlife scum, how ridiculous—but then it transformed into a rage that surpassed even the anger he’d been exuding up to this point, and when he pulled out his sword, there was murder in his eyes.

Before he had the chance to launch himself at the assassin, the figure, who’d been silent, spoke for the first time. She had a tome in hand, Raigh noticed. It wasn’t a pretty tome, like manuals of dark magic tended to be, passed down over the years from antiquity: this looked more like a ledger than anything else, handwritten, with a worn-away spine.

Raigh had never studied anima. Anima was a weaker form of magic, dependent on the mood of the spirits around you and how well they liked you; fluffy nonsense compared to the pure power humanity had seized from the dragons long ago. Still, when the woman flicked her wrist and a dagger-like bolt of wind hurled itself at the assassin with a speed he’d never seen, the movement cold and merciless, it was hard to remember why he’d scoffed at it.

The shot was precise, like an execution, but Lugh had shouted something too, and both spells connected with their target at once. The resulting flames cracked and spat, white and furious as lightning, emitting a wave of oven-hot wind that felt like dragon-fire against him. Raigh held up a hand to protect his eyes, but when he blinked, and squinted his eyes, he saw that the wave of energy had blown back the woman’s hood. Her hair was long and green, her eyes wild, and her breath ragged.

She looked like Lugh.

Raigh stared at her.

She looked _too much_ like Lugh.

Raigh’s mind was working too slowly, and so when the bounty hunter’s companion sprang forward from the treeline, even as he automatically pulled out his tome and readied himself to go on the offensive, he didn’t realise until it was almost too late that said companion wasn’t going for him, or Lugh, or Chad, but the woman with green hair and Lugh’s face.

The bounty Marchioness Tuscana had put on their heads cursed himself and Lugh as the malicious grandsons of Brendan Reed, carriers of his legacy of mayhem and murder through his long-lost daughter. That long-lost daughter had an even heftier bounty on her own head, and had done for years; and if there was the slightest chance the assassin had recognised her, and if she looked far too much like Lugh, did that mean—

He had never wanted a mother. The other children at the orphanage would whine about wanting to find their own, and he would mock them for it. _Why should you care who sired and mothered you when they left you here?_ Chad, and on occasion one of his Fathers, had needed to drag others off him more than a dozen times, but that was all right since he’d _been_ right and the others had been fools, but—

 _But_ —

That didn’t mean some no-name _dastard_ got to kill her before he could say a single word to her!

The grimoire he’d stolen from Count Reglay’s library fell open before him and he near-screamed the words which lay inside, the last syllables not even sounding fully human when he reached them. He felt the madness and whispers of the ancient dragons course through him, and he shoved them away, outward, before they could touch his mind. The spears of living smoke lanced forward from him and through the body of the man a fraction of a moment before he brought his filthy blade down, ripping his soul out from his body.  

He dropped to the ground silently, lifelessly, and Raigh's breath was as ragged as Lugh's had been. 

There was a long pause. Lugh and Chad’s noises of concern faded away as he stared at the woman.

Father had told him about his mother, once—or rather, he had told Lugh about her when he’d asked, and he couldn’t help overhearing with disinterest—and he’d given her name. Raigh hadn’t bothered asking for more information, of course, but he’d remembered the name. He’d not particularly meant to, but he’d always had a good memory. 

“Is your name Nino?” he asked. He wasn’t sure what his tone was, but he was certain nobody else in the world could have figured it out either.

The stranger looked at him. Her face—Lugh’s face—was tentative, bordering on scared. She bit her lip.

“It is,” said his mother.

 

**VI. DEIDAMIA ON OGYGIA**

 

> _tell me thy country, thy people and thy city, that our ships may convey thee thither_

The screams from above deck were muted down here in the bowels of the ship. His wrists were in pain from the rope tied tight around them and, not for the first time, he cursed himself for his brashness.

He’d bided his time for those too-many years, with a hard-won patience, the thought of home and the company of spirits _—_ and how odd it was, truly, that it was only when he was separated from his magic tools that he finally reached the level of understanding with them Lord Pent had always said was crucial _—_ his only pleasant company. 

He'd been close to fooling them. The pirate scum had even let him put his hands on a tome when their deck mage had fallen during a storm, begging him to save the _Calypso_ ; one blast of wind to counter another, one bolt of lightning to redirect another from the mast. He’d been nowhere near the shore, so he couldn’t take proper advantage of their lapse in judgement, but it had been something to hold one in his hand once again. Nor had he looked solely to the spirits while plotting his escape: he’d pored over each staff with which he’d been forced to heal their injuries, looking for ways they might be used to hurt, to move their target to madness, to sleep, to blindness, to oblivion.

He’d awaited the day they’d trust him enough to set him loose when they docked at whichever decrepit port they sailed into. He’d almost been there, he could feel it. And then one of the crew had casually tossed down a bounty with his sons’ names and faces on a table near him, the former familiar and the latter not, and here he was, back to square one.

He had already been away from home for far too long, and now, the timeframe that he’d told himself over and over again would one day come to an end now stretched into the distance and past the horizon.

Despair had been a constant companion since he’d been tossed down to the brig, the spirits crashing against the side of the ships too distant through the thick wood to hear properly, but that despair dissipated with a crash, and a crack, when the trapdoor above him opened and white sunlight poured into the _Calypso_ ’s belly. Erk winced, though with his hands bound, there was nothing he could do but squeeze his eyes until they were nearly fully closed. He would have to think of a way to defend himself if the attackers mistook him for being a willing member of the crew. (He’d come to admire those trained in nothing but the staff to an even greater extent after having been trapped aboard for all this time. How terrifying it was, to have nothing with which to fight back against an enemy bristling with weapons, to be their first target even so, and unable to mend themselves afterwards.)

A shape descended into the depths, and he braced himself.

“Cap’n! There’s a captive!” it cried.

Erk’s breath stopped as the shape came closer, and slotted into focus, shape to figure to woman. She pulled out a knife and made quick work of the ropes binding his hands, and while Erk rubbed his hands to get some feeling back into them, she talked to him gently, like he was a child. 

“Hey now, come on,” she said. “Can you stand all right? How long have they kept you down here?" 

Erk glowered at her, but then something occurred to him and he grabbed onto her shoulders.

“Where are we?” he demanded.

The woman in front of him was taken aback, but he quickly recovered. “Just off the Pheraen coast. Looks like this lot was planning on raiding while Lord Eliwood's got half his forces stretched over the continent, planning on doing some looting while the cat's away—”

“ _Pherae_ ,” said Erk, hungrily, ignoring everything she said after it. 

The word felt like _home_ in his mouth.

**FIN**

**Author's Note:**

> Quotes
> 
> Title: Crito—The imprisoned Socrates dreams of a woman in white  
> I. The Achilleid—Deidamia laments Achilles’ departure  
> II. The Odyssey—Achilles greets Odysseus in the underworld  
> III. The Achilleid—Odysseus plots the revelation of Achilles’ identity  
> IV. The Odyssey—Athena descends on Ithaca  
> V. Philoctetes—Neoptolemus recalls the reaction of the Achaeans to his arrival at Troy  
> VI. The Odyssey—Antinous asks Odysseus for his story 
> 
> Some addendums, because they disrupted the flow to have appear in the actual POV but I still wanna include them somehow:
> 
> 1\. Nino’s pegasus belonged to a local bounty hunter who flew up to the mountains in order to kill her and collect the bounty on her head. She was killed during the subsequent struggle, and Nino took care of the pegasus from that point on, going off how she remembered Florina treating Huey. This was her impetus to fully isolate herself, having falsely believed Niime and the others would be safe where Erk and her children would be in danger due to the former already living a hidden existence in the mountains.
> 
> 2\. Remnants of the Black Fang aided Elphin as part of the resistance movement against corrupt Etrurian nobles in the Western Isles. He grew to respect their ideology of putting down corrupt nobles, though he didn’t share quite their zeal to the same extent, and is now fairly knowledgeable about their history.
> 
> 3\. “Penelope” was the name of the King Mordred’s late wife, and Prince Mildain’s mother.
> 
> 4\. Hugh is one of the people who showed up to help out Raigh and Lugh. He was already thinking about going and helping them, but after the posters revealed that his “Auntie Nino”—who made him realise that magic could be beautiful as well as horrifying when she was in hiding with them in the mountains—was their mother, he got there with twice the speed.
> 
> 5\. The bounty on Nino’s head, which was expanded to fit her sons too, is funded by the Marchioness of Tuscana. All her children, corrupt noblemen and women, were murdered by the Black Fang; the only thing keeping her alive at this point is blind vengeance. She has been slated for death, however, though nobody knows it yet, since a certain someone who wanders Elibe protecting old members of the Fang took umbrage to her trying to kill his innocent “grand-nephews”.
> 
> 6\. This is Nino’s tome (https://fireemblemwiki.org/wiki/Iris%27s_Tome). It was her mother’s masterwork, unfinished and unbound before she died. Her Aunt Irina went back to Lycia when her sister’s family was massacred, and brought it back to the mountains. She gave it to Nino when they finally met. The tome did not come with instructions on type of movements required to activate the spells within.


End file.
